FIRST COMMUTE TO WORK EVER!!!

The temperature was a brisk 6-ish degrees C, but with shorts and a jacket (and gloves) I stayed warm enough. Actually, I didn't sweat very much at all. My commute features three mean hills, the second one being the worst. I had to ride up the sidewalk for that one, I even had to stop for a second to regain my strength. No matter, I'll be able to tackle them all without slowing down too much... in time. My legs are a little tired and my lungs aren't used to the cold, but I'll adapt to that soon enough as well. Oh yeah, it was a 4km ride, but those hills... argh. ;)

Drivers were polite, no-one honked and they all gave me enough space. We'll see how it goes on the way home during rush hour! I saw three other bike commuters on the way. Two outpaced me because of traffic lights in their favour, and one was going the opposite direction. Heh, that guy was bundled up like it was the middle of January!

Hmmm, what else? Oh yeah, I couldn't use my clipless shoes because I didn't have any way of bringing my work shoes with me. Size 13 steel-toe shoes are, um, unweildy when they're not attached to your feet! Someday when it rains and I take the car (sorry, not that hardcore yet) I'll take an extra pair of shoes with me and leave the work shoes in my locker.

Okay, started a new routine today. If it's new can it be a routine? ;)

Monday
Drive to work and go for a run
Ride home

Tuesday
Ride to work
Drive home

Wednesday
Drive to work and go for a run
Ride home

Thursday
Ride to work
Drive home

Friday
Drive to work and go for a run
Drive home

Saturday & Sunday
Recovery days

Left the shop this afternoon, it's pouring rain and 70 F with 15 mph winds out of the E, which puts the wind right at my back for about 75% of the ride. HOWever, all is not roses. These roads are a crushed coral substrate in the asphalt, which means they've got about the same friction coeficient as greased teflon when they're wet. No kidding, in 42-23, my favorite take off from the light gear, if I'm not careful and stand on it like I normally do I'll spin the back tire and go exactly nowhere.

As I'm cruising on down the slippery road I'm thinking, "You know, theoretically, if you were going fast enough and lost it on this slick road, your body would continue in a straight line making it more likely that you could recover the bike and lessen the likelyhood of doing a gravity check." Yeah, right. :rolleyes:

So anyway, I'm coming through town, approaching a light I've taken the lane when a car pulls out in front of the car in front of me. She gets on the brakes and starts to slide. I get on the brakes and the rear wheel breaks loose. The little voice (soft sultry female, of course) is saying, "Warning. Collision Imminent. Immediate Evasive Action Required....Warning. Collision Imminent. Immediate Evasive Action Required.................." Well we got through that one with everything right side up and intact. :)

After the big hill climb, I'm nearly home. Following a car, if we were going fast enough I could have been drafting. Now it's important to point out here that we drive on the left. She's preparing to hang a right. Turn signal comes on, brake lights come on, everything's groovy, then the little voice says, "You have room to pass on her left." The ditches on the secondary roads around here seem to be an after-thought. They're open pre-formed concrete with, usually, concrete covers on them, sometimes a metal grill work. This ones concrete until just past the car where I want to jook it back out on the road, of course right here in this spot it's aluminum diamond plate and I can't really see well enough to tell this because of the rain and fog on my glasses. For the folks that may have never experienced this, let me tell ya', wet rubber tires on wet aluminum diamond plate are slicker-'n-snot-on-a-doorknob. I lost both ends like right now. :eek: :eek: :eek:

I put my speed theory to the test. I'm now flying through the air in the cycling position wondering where my bike went. It's still under me, but in no position to keep gravity from sucking me to the ground.

Then all of a sudden WOOOO-HOOOOO, I've recovered it. I didn't go down WOOOOO, DID YOU SEE THAT? Wait a minute. There's nobody around but the car driver that just turned off. WOOOOO, I DIDN'T LOOSE THE FRONT END, I DIDN'T LOOSE THE REAR END. I COMPLETELY LOST THE WHOLE BLOOMIN' BIKE AND RECOVERED. WOOOOO. :D :D

Think there may have been a lesson in this afternoon's ride that I'm supposed to remember, but at forty something I would think I should already know what it is. :o

"Bones break. Be careful." :)

A co-worker of mine also rides and runs to work a lot. He does Iron Man-type stuff so it's training for him.

Haven't had a rainy commute in 2 or 3 weeks now. This morning it was in the low 40Fs and I had yet another nice ride to work.

This past weekend was perfect riding weather so I rode everywhere. I was to help with a fund-raiser/blood-drive, but I showed up too early. So I rode through the park and visited by biking buddy Dan. I felt bad because he thought I had come over to invite him along for a ride. Back to the fund-raiser and they ask me to go hang signs at some of the nearby shops. "With Pleasure!"

My car hasn't rolled out of the driveway since Wednesday afternoon and the only time I rode in a car this weekend was to go eat with some noncycling friends of mine. At least I didn't have to drive (I've never really enjoyed driving, not since I was fifteen at least).

This morning's commute to work was another great one. I just wish I had gotten up earlier so I could have taken the long way in. Still it's hard to get out of bed on a Monday morning.

I'll be headed out for Chicago tomorrow and will be stuck in a car for the next four days on a roadtrip. I'm going to see a couple of Nomeansno shows (any old-school punkers out there?). Should be worth it.

Warm commute, had to be 50F. Very nice ride with shorts and no wind vest/jacket. Legs were a little sluggish as I rode a lot on Sunday.

A great ride in this morning. Temps in the low 50's and my legs felt fresh. I'm back on my Surly after replacing my headset bearings this weekend, although it's not as nimble as the Centurion I've been riding for weeks, it feels a little faster and better suited for the bumps and potholes of DC streets. I'll probably break out of work a little early and head out to Wakefield/Accotink for some mountain riding, I heard the trails were in excellent shape.

What beautiful weather. First commute this season. Sunny and cool this morning. I couldn't ask for better biking weather. Enjoy your day from Schaumburg!

Excellent first day of the week commute. Today is 6C with very little wind and sunny. The nice weather is sure bringing out the fairweather cyclists and other athletes.

We are almost a one car family now. I sold my Saturn but took in a trade. The trade is only worth a couple of grand and it will soon be gone too. Anybody looking for a 1982 Grand Prix with 130,000 Km? I guess this wouldnt be the best place to try to sell a car. After this morning I can't understand why anyone would cage it too work if they had a choice.

Beautiful weather this morning, but traffic, especially truck traffic, was very heavy. Seemed like the entire route stunck of diesel. Hopefully a little wind this afternoon will clear it out.

Heading home on Friday we found a new bridge open and the detour we've been taking the last month is no longer needed. Fresh concrete and a new view is much better than the old pavement and tractor trailers we had gotten used to.

This morning the temps were in the upper 40's there was no wind and 10 other people out on bikes. I came accross a fox this morning, it was having a goose for breakfast. Looks like the score is even, Goose 1 and Fox 1.

Thank god for the commute. It was a really long, really exhausting weekend. I missed my group ride Saturday; I gave up my solo ride Sunday. The only time I got on a bike all weekend was to move it in and out of the garage.

A nice ride in this morning: cool and breezy with superblue skies. I brought a jersey and shorts for a "detour" on the ride home tonight.

Oh, and Jeff-O: Congrats. It's nice, isn't it? They think we're crazy, but sometimes I think that my bike is the only thing that keeps me sane.

Came across a fellow commuter this am. I'd judge him to be a newbie. Coming up behind, he stopped at the stop light and positioned in the ped crosswalk. We both went through the intersection, him slightly ahead, then he looked left and merged back into the lane. Doh. The shoulder narrowed up ahead so he went back on the sidewalk. I passed on the downhill and stopped at the next light, in the lane. He caught up to me on the sidewalk. I didn't feel like lecturing him. "Nice day for a bicycle ride". "Yep, gotta beat those gas prices". "Where you headed?" "Downtown". "Me, University". "Have a good one". Keep on truckin newbie! And don't get killed jumpin off those sidewalks!

Mostly cloudy - about 68 degrees. So basically the ride just wasn't long enough. I was half temped to ride to a starbucks or something and call in "sick". Course I would have had a hard time tomorrow explaining the fresh sunburn. I need to add suntan lotion to my bag.

Lots of wind on the way in today - Between the headwind and the extra 8 or so lbs of stuff in the panniers, I had to shift down to the granny ring on one hill. But the weekend chain / hub maintenance was feeling good and it was definitely good to be back on the road.

Despite it threating for rain it was good, I was tempted to just not ride into school (all we did was go over how tomorrow will go....STUPID STANDARIZED TEST!) It was warm, little windy, but other wise GREAT

Elvish

39F & cloudy at 6AM today, clearing with sunshine by lunchtime. I took a detour & got some extra miles. 59F & sunny with big white clouds at 4:00PM when I got home, forecast is for a sunny week. Don

Well, I've been commuting for exactly one week, and it was great until this morning; now the bike's in the shop. While heading in before dawn this morning, I got to one section of road where a parking area for a small business kind of melts right into the road (no shoulder, curb, etc.). I had not realized that I was drifting a bit to the right. Where the parking area gets to the road, there's this one small area that has some shattered asphalt, and of course I slid in it and went down. I didn't even go down very hard, and partially caught myself. It wasn't nearly as spectacular as a crash this past winter, when I went down on some ice and slid 30 feet or so. It was, however, just right to bend my rear derailleur (or perhaps the hanger; I really have not developed any great bike-mechanical knowledge yet). It still worked, but all of my rear gears were off by 1 sprocket, and I couldn't downshift all the way or the derailleur got way too close to the spokes. The LBS was a bit backed up with work, given the time of year, and I'm hoping to be back in the saddle next week. O well.

Perfect. Absolutely, 100% perfect. I live for going to work.

An unbelievable 50F this am! Thundershower went through about two hours before I got up, well I got up for a while anyway and lost abit of sleep. Roads were wet but no rain on me. Near 80F for the ride home! Cross wind not a problem.

Great ride today !

gorgeous ride home. had good commuting company (my boss), good weather, and enough time to take a VLC-worthy route home: 20 miles, 10 of which were on a nice bike path past a lake (Vasona for the locals) with lots of peds, puppies, and other cyclists but blissfully, no cars.

I was surprised by a "beep-beep" from a car on the way home last night. When I looked, it turned out to be one of the guys from the bike shop on his way home!

Cheers,

Ed

Finally able to ride to work again after getting a new rear wheel. Ride this morning was nice, mid 50s and sunny :)

I am glad to join the many here who commute to work. I just started a couple of weeks ago.

High 30Fs. Sunny. Too sunny. We're very dry here in Vermont. Looks like rain tomorrow though.

Supposed to be very warm (70?) this afternoon, and I might actually get a tail wind! Joy.